Optimal Geographic Caching in Finite Wireless Networks

Abstract: Cache-enabled device-to-device (D2D) networks turn memory of the devices at the network edge, such as smart phones and tablets, into bandwidth by enabling asynchronous content sharing directly between proximate devices. Limited storage capacity of the mobile devices necessitates the determination of optimal set of contents to be cached on each device. In order to study the problem of optimal cache placement, we model the locations of devices in a finite region (e.g., coffee shop, sports bar, library) as a uniform binomial point process (BPP). For this setup, we first develop a generic framework to analyze the coverage probability of the target receiver (target-Rx) when the requested content is available at the $k^{th}$ closest device to it. Using this coverage probability result, we evaluate optimal caching probability of the popular content to maximize the total hit probability. Our analysis concretely demonstrates that optimal caching probability strongly depends on the number of simultaneously active devices in the network.